United States v. Cohn

303 F. Supp. 2d 672, 2003 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 24662, 2003 WL 23281559
CourtDistrict Court, D. Maryland
DecidedOctober 7, 2003
DocketCRIM. AMD 01-0374
StatusPublished
Cited by15 cases

This text of 303 F. Supp. 2d 672 (United States v. Cohn) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Maryland primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Cohn, 303 F. Supp. 2d 672, 2003 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 24662, 2003 WL 23281559 (D. Md. 2003).

Opinion

MEMORANDUM OPINION

DAVIS, District Judge.

After several weeks of trial before a jury, Four Star Financial Services, LLC (“Four Star”), and its Executive Vice President/General Counsel, Mark Cohn, Esquire (“Cohn”), were on June 12, 2003, convicted of multiple counts of mail fraud and wire fraud and a single count of conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud. The charges arose from defendants’ participation in a nationwide fraudulent telemarketing program in operation from 1999 through 2001. As explained below, in the midst of trial, I rejected Four Star’s reliance on the attorney-client privilege in its attempt to bar the government from obtaining documents from Four Star and the testimony of a former Four Star in-house lawyer. This opinion elucidates the reasons for my ruling.

I.

A brief overview of this prosecution will place the attorney-client privilege issue in perspective. Four Star operates as a high-return investment vehicle whose business plan consists of, in substantial part, funding high- and moderate-risk loans to a range of businesses. Four Star maintains offices in Los Angeles and South San Francisco, California, where Cohn .worked. In addition to Cohn (who was Executive Vice President and General Counsel), two attorneys, Stacy Pompei, Esq., and Nancy Ozimek, Esq., worked at Four Star during the period covered by the indictment. The three of them constituted Four Star’s “legal department.”

Cohn (through Four Star) and a man named Joel Katz had a business relationship for many years, in consequence of which Katz owed Four Star a significant sum. Thus, starting in or about 1999, in order to 'enable Katz to repay an outstanding indebtedness to Four Star amounting to millions of dollars, Four Star agreed to provide financing to Katz (who is a co-defendant in this case but was tried separately) to fund a telemarketing program. Over the years, the telemarketing program was called, variously, “The Money Club,” “The Tele-Money Club,” “Smart Savers Club,” “Cash Card Club,” “Cash Card Express” or “National Consumers Benefits Club.” Under the program, telemarketing representatives working out of call rooms located throughout the United States (including Baltimore, where Katz was headquartered) would contact targeted consumers by phone, employing high-speed computerized phone dialers. The targeted consumers were individuals known to have credit problems, and consisted of significant numbers of older persons. Employing written scripts prepared by Katz and others, the telemarketing representatives told consumers, inter alia, that for a price between a low of about $49.95 and a high of about $199.95, they would receive a credit card, coupons and discounts, and other benefits as a “member” of “the club.” Payments from those agreeing, to participate were processed through electronic funds withdrawals from consumers’ checking and savings accounts. In fact, the various programs were fraudu *677 lent in design and in execution; the actual packages (termed, in industry parlance, “fulfillment packages”) sent to purchasers (when anything at all was sent) contained few items of actual value, including a list of banks where consumers could apply for a credit card. In or about February 2000, after Cohn learned that Katz was diverting revenue from the scheme to his own uses, Cohn terminated the Four Star/Katz arrangement and caused Four Star to assume active operation of the telemarketing program, both in-house at Four Star and through shell corporations that were effectively Four Star subsidiaries. The government contends that, in total, the telemarketing scheme defrauded more than 31,000 consumers of more $3.6 million.

Over the course of the government’s investigation of the scheme, Four Star produced numerous documents in response to a grand jury subpoena, covering the period from June 1999 through early 2001. Many of those documents included large numbers of hard copies of e-mails authored by or received by members of the Four Star “legal department,” including Cohn and the two attorneys he supervised, Pompei and Ozimek. Nevertheless, Four Star also provided the government with a privilege log, in which it identified potentially responsive documents that were not produced, based on attorney-client privilege or work product privilege. In short, Four Star apparently purported to make a limited waiver of its attorney-client privilege in responding to the subpoena. The government expressed continuing concern, as trial approached, that Four Star was inappropriately withholding or failing to produce documents that should have been produced. Partly to allay this concern, the government served Four Star with a trial subpoena, which in significant part duplicated the grand jury subpoenas that had previously been served on Four Star, but which also sought additional documents. Four Star produced additional documents on the eve of trial, some of them under a tight deadline which I imposed.

On or about May 12, 2003, after the jury had been empaneled and trial had commenced, the government filed a motion in which it asserted, inter alia, that Four Star and/or Cohn were impeding its ability to call as a witness Stacy Pompei, one of Four Star’s former in-house lawyers and a former Cohn subordinate. Specifically, the government moved to compel Pompei’s testimony. Four Star filed an opposition to the motion on May 15, 2003,' arguing that a residuum of its attorney-client privilege barred the government from calling Pompei as a witness and asserting, further, that Pompei had an independent “duty of confidentiality” under California law which arguably prohibited her testimony. Finally, Four Star argued that, in any event, the government was not entitled to meet privately with Pompei outside the presence of Four Star’s counsel. Four Star also sought the return of an e-mail it had produced on the eve of trial that had been authored by Pompei, insisting that the e-mail had been turned over inadvertently.

On May 16, 2003, I held a hearing during which the government, Four Star and Pompei (both by counsel and personally) were heard. It became clear to me that Pompei was perfectly willing to meet with government counsel and the investigating agents so long- as doing so did not violate any independent duty owed to Four Star. I directed Four Star to provide me with a detailed list of the areas, topics, questions, time periods, and/or subject matter that Four Star contended were covered by any subsisting attorney-client privilege and to explain what, if any, “duty of confidentiality” Pompei had under California law that survived any waiver of the attorney-client privilege. Four Star’s response, dated *678 May 20, 2003, invoked the attorney-client privilege over a broad range of matters.

On May 21, 2003, in an oral opinion, I rejected Four Star’s assertion that it retained any attorney-client privilege in respect to contemporaneous communications related to the telemarketing program (however it might be denominated from time-to-time) which was the subject of the indictment. I entered an order finding and concluding as.follows:

(1) In respect to the operation of [the Four Star] telemarketing program ...

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
303 F. Supp. 2d 672, 2003 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 24662, 2003 WL 23281559, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-cohn-mdd-2003.